An Ode to High Places
Some of us just can’t help seeing a peak without wondering what might be visible from its summit, and we’re not sure why.
If you offered to transport me anywhere on earth for a day, I’d choose a meadow in India beneath the mountain of my dreams. Picture it: a long crescent ridge curls uphill, then sharpens into a pinnacle of ice over 25,000 feet high, the jet-stream whipping a ribbon of cloud from its summit. On every side, a citadel of lower peaks rises up in two concentric rings. And lurking within, at the foot of the holy mountain known as Nanda Devi, lies an inviolable Shangri-la of golden grassland, silent but for the rumble of avalanches and the plaintive bleats of bharal sheep.
Remote, awe-inspiring, transcendent — the Nanda Devi Sanctuary, a glacial basin in India’s Garhwal Himalayas, embodies everything that I love about mountain-country. It is a region I’ve been fortunate to glimpse from afar, and nowadays I see a panorama of it daily, hung in a frame on a wall at home. Chances are I’ll never reach it — an all but impassable box canyon, the Rishi Gorge, offers the only route in. But perhaps it is enough just to know that it’s there — places like this can make the weariest cynic admit some faith in the divine.
